


The Truth Will Set You Free

by Anonymous



Category: Death Note & Related Fandoms, Death Note (Anime & Manga)
Genre: Angst, Bible references, Child Neglect, Good Yagami Light, Idiots in Love, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Introspection, M/M, Not Canon Compliant, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Out of Character, POV Yagami Light, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Self-Discovery, Sorry Not Sorry, Torture, Waterboarding, just a bit though, no beta we die like men
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-02-07
Updated: 2021-02-28
Packaged: 2021-03-12 02:21:34
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 4
Words: 16,269
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29252880
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: "If you abide by my word, you are truly my disciples, and you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free."It had only been a couple of hours but it was wearing on him in a way nothing ever had, so he expected his confession to be met with relief and compassion.Or the story of regret and forgiveness and how they interlace.
Relationships: L/Yagami Light
Comments: 7
Kudos: 37
Collections: Anonymous





	1. Genesis

_"In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth..."_

The cell was mostly empty and unremarkable with off-white paint peeling off the walls, a sink next to a toilet in the corner farthest away from the door, a cot with scratchy covers, and a camera recording his every move above the door. He had already counted every crack in the roof and every visible stain in all four walls.

_"...And the earth was without form and void, and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters...."_

His recreation hours went to the library, where he would read as many books as he could take not for want but for a lack of a clock. The first couple of days he had made the mistake of laying down and trying to either remember or forget who he was, and it had landed him into a deep state of disorientation. He hadn't known anything about nothing, besides that there were thirty-four blood-like stains on the wall next to the cot. He wondered how many would be added if he shot himself inside the cell.

_"...And God said, Let there be light: and there was light..."_

No one had any contact with him. The guards, at first, had mocked him for his mission but after quickly threatening them with ending their lives in the upcoming forty seconds, the guards had been switched to others that knew how to keep their thoughts to themselves. His stunt earned him a profuse beating, and while he didn't ask for assistance, not one nurse tried to heal him. He felt invisible in the worst sort of way, to the point where he believed that maybe it was alright to forget. Ryuk had been gone too since Light provided no source of entertainment.

_"...And God saw the light, that it was good: and God divided the light from the darkness..."_

He wished he had never stumbled upon the notebook when he was arrested, but he had wished to forget after the third day of the blockade of food imposed by the guards. When he had no one but himself, when his mind could only drift to the most useless books in the library, and when he thought of Ryuzaki's face when he had confessed, he wished he could simply walk away from the mission that he had been given.

_"..And God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And the evening and the morning were the first day..."_

Had everyone else been weak? Or was he psychotic? He had heard of severe cases of schizophrenia combined with other conditions that lead some patients into believing that they had been appointed by God himself to carry on his wish over the land. He worried he might have suffered from the same if it wasn't for the Shinigamis, but if he had some sort of evidence or validation from fate or otherworldly realms, why had he been so wrong? It felt as if he had been given the ultimate message, to sacrifice himself over the good of the people.

_"...And God said, Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters..."_

He knew what were his intentions, and the cost to pay for saving the world from its evils, and it was the only thing that did not haunt him at night when the names came off the pages of the notebook and clamored some sort of twisted justice. Maybe they had all been cut from the same tree, but there was a great difference between them and Light. He wished Ryuzaki could understand him as much as he believed in his own resolve.

_"...And God made the firmament, and divided the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament: and it was so..."_

They had gone through so much before and through the isolation, when they had been chained together, and when he gained his memories back, but L had found a way to remain expressionless through most of it until Light had confessed. Higuchi was alive and in custody, waiting for them to interrogate him the next day, and the adrenaline was pumping high through every one of them. L had been properly excited, a tentative yet broad smile peaking through his face when he decided to kiss Light. It didn't last long before he let it slip, and the smile was eradicated.

_"...And God called the firmament Heaven. And the evening and the morning were the second day."_

A loud bang from his door forced him out of his thoughts, and so he walked towards the door and stuck his hands out through the small hole at waist level. Once cuffed, the door swung open to reveal someone very different from what he was used to. A kid, probably three or four years younger than him, stood tall and proud before him with a smirk worthy of nightmares.

"So you are the great Kira."

There was something of him that resembled Ryuzaki in a way that he found deeply disturbing, despite the physical differences. He was shorter, probably missing a growth spurt or two, and his blonde hair laid flatly while touching his chins and his eyes thanks to the bangs. Piercing blue eyes mocked him loudly, and he found himself wishing he could punch him.

"Well although I don't know how great you are if you are sitting here."

"And you are?"

"Mello, although once you get to know me you'll call me 'My Worst Nightmare'."

"Cute, especially coming from a kid."

His grin soured, and he quickly walked into the cell and pushed him out, leading him through long and strange hallways that seemed to connect nowhere and everywhere at once. As they went forward, the hallways became darker and darker, until he found himself facing a light blue door–different from the usually dingy cream that colored every surface. The room behind the door looked like it belonged, with nothing on the walls except four cameras standing on every corner, and a speaker sitting by one of the cameras. What was strange, however, was the long table that sat in the middle of the room, straps hanging from both extremes

"Prisoner number zero-one-two-eight-two-zero-one-ten," recited Mello like a bored child in a school play, "you are here for the murders of approximately one hundred and twenty-five thousand individuals throughout the world, definitely impressive if you ask me..."

Mello kept going about his crimes and exploits, eventually inserting a comment here and there, while four other guards walked into the room all of which looked more physically capable of overpowering him than the kid in front of him.

"I've been sent here to obtain a confession from you."

"Why would I confess something I didn't do?"

"Because we all know that you are Kira."

"If that is the case, then you still would not need a confession."

"Don't you want to put this to rest?"

"I will not do your job for you, and if you cannot make a compelling argument with the evidence gathered, then I suggest all of you go back to investigating."

Light smirked at his cleverness, and when he saw a matching grin on Mello's face he realized that he expected his answer. A whistle flew past the blond's lips, and the guards gripped on to his shoulders and pushed him up the table, while the other two strapped his feet, torso, and upper body to the table. Struggling had given him a punch in the eye and another in the stomach, leaving him out of breath long enough for them to finish their job.

"Have you ever heard of waterboarding, Kira-kun?"

The guards brought buckets and buckets of water, along with different types of cloths and plastic bags that made him question how long could he last strapped to the chair.

"The longest a person has lasted underwater without breathing is twelve minutes and forty-seven seconds, and that is after breathing pure oxygen for thirty minutes before immersion. While the average human can make it up to a minute or two, I believe," he whispered as he brushed off the hair away from Light's forehead, "that the first time you might make it to the minute, but eventually panic will get the better of you–don't be offended, it always does–and you won't be able to make it past ten seconds. Isn't the human mind quite the fragile thing?"

Mello quickly picked up the first bucket and started to slowly pour the water into his mouth. It was quite bizarre the feeling of drowning in dry land, but he tried thinking of other things to not recognize the burning feeling in his throat and lungs. The image of dawn came into his head, shy sunshine coloring the sky in purples and pinks, tinting the sugar cubes on the windowsill a glowing orange.

“Did you know,” asked Ryuzaki as he stared away from his laptop's screen into the sunrise, “that Japan is often referred to as the ‘Land of the Rising Sun’?”

“Of course.”

“I figured that maybe you hadn’t,” he confessed, “after all, that’s how the world reads it.”

“Nippon means-“

“‘The Sun’s Origin,’ I know.”

“It’s not the same.”

“Exactly why I asked,” he replied looking at Light, “ I wonder why it gets lost in translation.”

“Imagine if the world, with all of its superstition, agreed that the Sun was born in Japan.”

Ryuzaki didn’t seem to be listening, too intent in looking at Light straight into his eyes in a way that felt stripping, and he would’ve been damned if he hadn’t taken the opportunity to do the same. His black hair glowed with the incoming light, but as he was facing away from the Sun, his face seemed darker and even more haunted than before. His lips parted, gathering breath to tell him something, but his resolve melted away like his sugar in coffee.

“The Sun rises here before anywhere else.”

“Just happened to be a coincidence, don’t you think?”

“It takes a bit more than coincidence.”

“We can agree to disagree.”

“If you saw what I see, Light-kun,” he breathed softly as he looked at the reflection of sunlight in Light’s face, “maybe you would believe that it took more than mere coincidence.”

The cloth was taken out of his mouth as he coughed violently, trying to swallow the water left to take a deep breath. Before thirty seconds had passed, the rag was stuffed back in and more water poured down.

_"...And God said, Let the waters under the heaven be gathered together unto one place, and let the dry land appear: and it was so. And God called the dry land Earth, and the gathering together of the waters called he Seas: and God saw that it was good. And God said, Let the earth bring forth grass, the herb yielding seed, and the fruit tree yielding fruit after his kind, whose seed is in itself, upon the earth: and it was so. And the earth brought forth grass, and herb yielding seed after his kind, and the tree yielding fruit, whose seed was in itself, after his kind: and God saw that it was good. And the evening and the morning were the third day..._

“Coincidences are ridiculous,” Ryuzaki had said in another instance.

“Well, call them odds.”

“I don’t believe in something as feeble as chance.”

“Then you’re saying everything happens for a reason.”

“Not necessarily.”

“You can’t have it both ways.”

“Not everything has to be caused by a profound reason. You might exhibit behaviors that could resemble those of Kira because either you are Kira-“

“Which I’m not.”

“-or because you and Kira have something in common. I don’t believe that it is simply a coincidence that I suspect you.”

“Maybe you are putting too many hopes in yourself, you could be wrong.”

The room was quiet, the rest of the task force had gone home, and Light's handcuff was still bitting into his wrist deep into the night.

"I have only been wrong a handful of times."

"Have you ever wished you were wrong?"

_"...And God said, Let there be lights in the firmament of the heaven to divide the day from the night; and let them be for signs, and for seasons, and for days, and years: And let them be for lights in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth: and it was so. And God made two great lights; the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night: he made the stars also. And God set them in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth, and to rule over the day and over the night, and to divide the light from the darkness: and God saw that it was good. And the evening and the morning were the fourth day..."_

"In the summer of ninety-five, a man started killing women and kidnapping children throughout Europe. Most governments kept it under wraps since the last thing you would want is a continent-spread panic, but they were alerted enough to notice a pattern and send it our way. It was one of my first cases without the assistance of anyone, and I felt as if I could do no wrong."

He noticed how Ryuzaki hadn't even thought about it, hadn't even bothered to look back into his history. Maybe he had only been wrong once, or maybe it was the sort of mistake that was hard to forget.

"What was the pattern?"

"All thirty-three victims were women between the ages of twenty and forty, mothers of young children who had been in some way suspected of suffering from child abuse."

"Why were you wrong?"

"I figured that he felt like a vigilante, like Kira in some sense, and was punishing the mothers for mistreating the children. While they were kidnapped for their safety, he could have been more than willing to end their lives."

"Why?"

"If he saw the police as a threat, it would have been the same as if they were back in the custody of their mothers. I told them and asked them to proceed with caution, and when the police along with the Interpol arrived at the hideout, he shot every hostage."

"All thirty-three?"

"Forty-five," he corrected, "some women had more than one kid."

The cloth was removed once again, his nose and throat burning with the water that had been caught in the airways, and Mello slapped him hard. Before he reevaluated his decision, Light gathered his breath and spit on Mello's still-pristine face. Instead of lashing out, he simply started laughing hysterically, putting a dirty sock in his mouth and pouring more water.

_"...And God said, Let the waters bring forth abundantly the moving creature that hath life, and fowl that may fly above the earth in the open firmament of heaven. And God created great whales, and every living creature that moveth, which the waters brought forth abundantly, after their kind, and every winged fowl after his kind: and God saw that it was good. And God blessed them, saying, Be fruitful, and multiply, and fill the waters in the seas, and let fowl multiply in the earth. And the evening and the morning were the fifth day..."_

"What happened to the fathers? The husbands?"

"They were all out of the picture," he said, "some we couldn't reach, and the others didn't care what happened to the children."

"But-"

"The families of the women, with exception of a couple, didn't claim the children as they expressed that they should not have been born in the first place. Once they were identified, it was up to the governments to take care of the bodies. They wanted to cremate them since it was the cheapest option, but I asked the representatives to use part of my payment for the burials. Around seventy percent of the European population is Catholic, and as far as I know, you shouldn't be cremated... something about God reuniting your spirit with your body on the Final Judgement and whatnot."

He was opening up to him in the most subtle of ways, revealing a little bit more of who was the man behind the simple letter, and he found himself only honored to listen to him.

"I would have assumed that he wouldn't have done it."

"He did and I was right, but they had to die to prove my point. I wished you were right, Light-kun, but here we are."

_"...And God said, Let the earth bring forth the living creature after his kind, cattle, and creeping thing, and beast of the earth after his kind: and it was so. And God made the beast of the earth after his kind, and cattle after their kind, and everything that creepeth upon the earth after his kind: and God saw that it was good..."_

The scene faded into darkness, light seeping out through the edges, and before he could realize what was going to in his body, consciousness drifted away into the memories.

He woke up still strapped to the chair, now an IV stuck to his lower left leg, and gagged with a ripped-off sleeve tied to the side of his face.

"Sleeping Beauty fits you better than Kira."

Mello sat in an armchair located in one of the corners of the room, a deep burgundy contrasting against the off-color cream of the walls and the stained grey linoleum floors.

"After all, I haven't met anyone that can sleep thirty-five hours straight."

He quickly stood up and climbed on the table, straddling him as Light noticed that the guards from before were gone.

"They even had to clean you up, after you got yourself all dirty with this saliva and mucus and other bodily fluids, and I have to admit," Light felt as Mello sat comfortably over his hips and laid his own body on top of his, "I kind of understand why L has got the hots for you."

He felt uncomfortable on top of violated, trying to gather any memory of what had happened after he had passed out, but came back empty-handed to a bored Mello looking at him through his bangs, a wretched smile on his face.

"Dirty and everything, you are quite the picture of perfection. The slick hair and the prettiest face, with enough body to go with it, it makes you a sight for sore eyes."

Nausea pooled in his stomach, making him want to throw up whatever currently was still left in his system, but Mello kept him too busy and incapacitated to do so.

"But you're not L's type anymore, with all of that murder following your steps, but I have to confess that I find you quite cute, Sleeping Beauty."

"Mello."

A harsh voice came through the speakers of the room, and while he was too busy thanking it, he also noticed that there was something familiar about the voice.

"Well, if I'm here might as well have some fun," he answered as he looked at Light, his tongue licking his lips.

"Focus on the task."

Mello groaned at the man as he got off from him, his tears attempting to betray him in front of such a person.

"He's quite boring," said Mello as he opened the door to the guards that carried more buckets full of water, "but you and I have all the time in the world."

_"And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth. So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them. And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth. And God said, Behold, I have given you every herb bearing seed, which is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree, in the which is the fruit of a tree yielding seed; to you it shall be for meat. And to every beast of the earth, and to every fowl of the air, and to every thing that creepeth upon the earth, wherein there is life, I have given every green herb for meat: and it was so. And God saw every thing that he had made, and, behold, it was very good. And the evening and the morning were the sixth day."_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I was really on the fence wether or not I should post this story since it is my first one and English is not my first language, but I figured that at the end of the day, it's all about the main story :)


	2. Leviticus

" _Then the Lord spoke to Moses, saying: “Command the children of Israel that they bring to you pure oil of pressed olives for the light, to make the lamps burn continually. Outside the veil of the Testimony, in the tabernacle of meeting, Aaron shall be in charge of it from evening until morning before the Lord continually; it shall be a statute forever in your generations. He shall be in charge of the lamps on the pure gold lampstand before the Lord continually..."_

He had woken up in the infirmary days after the fact, if the bag of fluids was a reliable source for time, with a profound pain in his chest. He tentatively pressed his fingers on his libs or his sternum feeling for a bruise, but the pain only worsened when he took a breath. A quiet doctor came to check on him, but when he mentioned the pain in his chest the doctor acted as if he hadn't heard him. The man declared that he was not in imminent danger and therefore he was quickly taken back to the empty cell. The guards demanded that he gathered his things for a shower, and he eagerly did so not only to take an unsupervised opportunity to check what was going on in his body but also to get rid of the feeling of being layered with dirt.

The showers were dark cubicle-like rooms with barely enough ventilation to avoid suffocation, and since the only way out was through the door, the guards felt safe enough to uncuff him for five minutes. The door closed, and when he opened the shower he found himself facing greater problems. The water pooled on the floor and as much as he could see it go down the drain, it felt as if it was pouring faster than it could leave. He tried fixating on it, looking at his feet and seeing that the water levels were not rising, but he felt it crawl up his legs and torso into his nose, burning him from the inside out. Panic rose in him and took control of his inhibitions as he started to bang on the door and beg the guards to let him out. They did open, but when they realized what was going on, it was simply too much of a good opportunity to let go.

"The great Kira is afraid of some water?"

He believed that whatever had happened was something no one would know about, that it was happening deep within the prison behind closed doors for a reason, but clearly, there were no qualms about torture and much less when they involved someone like him. They dragged him back into the showers and pushed him under the now-scalding water, holding him as he hyperventilated and his body screamed under the duress until it gave up on him.

_"...And you shall take fine flour and bake twelve cakes with it. Two-tenths of an ephah shall be in each cake. You shall set them in two rows, six in a row, on the pure gold table before the Lord. And you shall put pure frankincense on each row, that it may be on the bread for a memorial, an offering made by fire to the Lord. Every Sabbath he shall set it in order before the Lord continually, being taken from the children of Israel by an everlasting covenant. And it shall be for Aaron and his sons, and they shall eat it in a holy place; for it is most holy to him from the offerings of the Lord made by fire, by a perpetual statute..."_

The first thought that assaulted him when he regained consciousness, dry, shivering, and incredibly sore, was that there had to be a link between L and Mello. Besides the fact that Mello had mentioned the detective's name, there seemed to be a connection deeper than an acquaintance if he were to judge by the way the blond had referred to Ryuzaki. As he tried not to feel the phantom touches of Mello, he felt the burning desire to know if L had taken him here fully knowing what he would be subjected to.

"I'm Kira," he had said as softly as he could, mostly letting out a soundless breath.

It had been loud, and L stepped away, almost hesitant and probably asking himself if he had heard right. His eyes seemed calculating, and while there wasn't disbelief in them he could see that L was fighting hard against logic.

"Let me-"

"Don't say it," he replied as he hid his eyes behind the ball of his hands as if he could bury himself out of a nightmare.

"It's the truth."

"But Higuchi-"

"I asked the Shinigami to give it away to someone who would use it for personal gain." L started pacing, his feet shuffling against the carpeted floors, as he pulled his hair.

"Then how did criminals die after you... how long has Higuchi had it for?"

"I don't know exactly-"

"Don't lie!"

"I'm not lying."

"You are coming clean, confessing, and yet you can't-"

"I gave away the ownership of the notebook while I was in isolation. When you give up the notebook, you lose all your memories relating to it."

"So all of this time-"

"I didn't lie."

"That is hard to believe."

They didn't know whether they were talking about Light's innocence or all of the disastrous feelings they had been sharing for months. That statement had turned L into stone and Light into a quivering mess: He was the God of the new world and it was bad enough that he had fallen for his biggest obstacle, but he also did not have it in him to even stand up to the man. Did he felt betrayed and hurt enough to send Light away to be tortured? Whether he believed it or not his feelings had been and still were genuine, and so it made everything that much more painful.

A soft knock ushered him out of his mind, and once he realized it came from the outside, he stuck his hands out to be cuffed and stepped back for the opening door. Mello stood on the other side, as arrogant as before but thankfully mute. With a quick gesture he asked that Light followed him, and to avoid trying the boy out of his sulk, he walked right behind him. He was guided through another set of hallways into a different room, dark and small like the showers but with a floor to ceiling vent that pushed out enough cold air to make the room into a walk-in fridge. Once he was inside, Mello locked the door and let him inside to cool.

_"...Now the son of an Israelite woman, whose father was an Egyptian, went out among the children of Israel; and this Israelite woman’s son and a man of Israel fought each other in the camp. And the Israelite woman’s son blasphemed the name of the Lord and cursed; and so they brought him to Moses. (His mother’s name was Shelomith the daughter of Dibri, of the tribe of Dan.) Then they put him in custody, that the mind of the Lord might be shown to them..."_

Did his father know where he was? Did his mother? Would they even care? L had cuffed him before he knew what was going on, and once the task force had been informed of his crimes, his father was the first one up on his feet. He had practically run up to him and punched him before he could even think of dodging, not like he would have anyways, his eyes filled with rage and disappointment.

"How could you?!" He spat before he went down with him and started punching the daylights out of him.

Ryuzaki and the other members of the task force had to take him off Light before he could harm him anymore, and while the rest sided with their chief, Ryuzaki stood in front of Light.

"I'm sorry, Yagami-san, but he is in my custody and I can't let you-"

"He is my son!"

"I'm sorry but I can't let you hurt him."

He had wanted Ryuzaki to hide him in a hole in the middle of the Earth just by the look in his father's face, and he couldn't fathom what his mother would have done.

"Then keep him."

"I'm sorry?"

"Whatever you decide to do with him, whatever the world wants to do with him, I don't want to hear of him ever again."

Had his mother turned her back on him like that? His father had always been a special case as he was never enough to satisfy the man, but his mother had always been the one to treat him like a human being. It was difficult to wrap his head around the fact that the people that loved him, something so strong and unconditional, had turned away from him and sent him to slaughter.

A loud scraping sound resounded within the small room, and he looked up to see a metal slab coming off the roof to reveal thick bars. Before he could ask himself what was going to happen, ice-cold water was poured through the bars and into him. Once he got over the initial shock of the water, as it had only been a bit and it was going effortlessly going down a drain, the cold made him shiver and huddle into a corner of the room away from the vent.

_"...And the Lord spoke to Moses, saying, "Take outside the camp him who has cursed; then let all who heard him lay their hands on his head, and let all the congregation stone him. Then you shall speak to the children of Israel, saying: ‘Whoever curses his God shall bear his sin. And whoever blasphemes the name of the Lord shall surely be put to death. All the congregation shall certainly stone him, the stranger as well as him who is born in the land. When he blasphemes the name of the Lord, he shall be put to death..."_

The first time he saw Ryuzaki asleep, it only lasted a couple of eternal minutes. The bags under his eyes were still there, and they would probably never go away, but his face relaxed as years seemed to fade away from his expression. The peace only lasted seconds before his brows furrowed and he woke up, his hand immediately on his mouth as he panted against it. His face was ashen and cold sweat clung to him like a ghost.

"A nightmare?"

Ryuzaki simply turned away from him, his breathing still labored and his shoulders shaking.

"You can talk to me about it if you would like."

The silence was loud, only interrupted by their breaths, and he decided that maybe the best thing to do was to remind him where he was. Light placed his cuffed hand on top of his head and started brushing his hair into the usual flow of disaster that it followed.

"The forty-five always chase me," he said more to himself than to Light, "and they are not alone. The innocent ones and the guilty ones follow me too."

He had always believed that curiosity and simple insomnia kept him up at night but to know that he was as human as everyone else, capable of nightmares and regrets, made him feel pity and sorrow for the young man.

"Sometimes I feel like Kira," he confessed, "as if I'm trying to rid the world of the worst of the worst."

It had felt unreasonable back when he didn't remember who he had been, and now it felt heavy like he was carrying both their burdens and mistakes.

"He probably thinks he is like me too, that we are both just and fair. The only difference between him and me is who we side with."

"You aren't killing people."

"But I am," he said while turning to face him, a hand holding Light's in place, "you know how many people are waiting to be executed after I caught them?"

"You only caught them, you didn't sentence them. You didn't force them to commit those crimes, they forced you to punish them for it."

"Sometimes, it feels the same."

Light had stopped stroking his hair once Ryuzaki had been staring at him, but a millisecond of a pleading look made Light continue in his resolve. By the time the sun rose, his hand was still buried in inky-black hair, and Light himself had fallen asleep thinking of children and criminals.

The slab came off once again and more water was poured in, and he didn't bother to look up but he curled up on the floor to conserve most of his body temperature. He knew that it was a normal body response to shiver, but he couldn't help but to think that he hadn't been there long enough to be that cold.

_"...‘Whoever kills any man shall surely be put to death. Whoever kills an animal shall make it good, animal for animal..."_

His mother and sister had been the ones that taught them the meaning of love. Sachiko was the perfect wife in the most patriarchal way, always making sure everything was pristine for her family and always willing to soothe their problems. Sayu had always needed him in some sense, and he had always been willing and glad to help her. He had received love and had given love thanks to them. His father was the harsh reality of the outside world.

"Did you know," started Ryuzaki one day as Light poured him the first cup of coffee of the day, "that humans mostly demonstrate affection through five different ways?"

L had taken up every opportunity to fill him with useless trivia, feeding him facts that had nothing to do with the case and probably had nothing to do with anything. He had never quite figured out if it was his way to either woo him or make some sort of small talk.

"Oh?"

"Words of affirmation, quality time, the exchange of gifts, acts of service, and physical touch."

"I would not have taken you as an expert on human affections or interactions."

"You do need to study psychology to understand criminals, and affections and interactions are a great part of the human psyche" he commented, "besides there's nothing wrong in having such knowledge."

"I'm not saying that there is anything wrong, just that is quite unexpected."

There was still darkness in the office, the stars still visible from the tall windows, and a bubble seemed to be wrapped around them, bathing them with a sense of security they wouldn't have without it.

"Yours is probably through acts of service."

"Why would you say that?"

"Well you always helped your mother and sister while you were at home," and then he looked at the untouched coffee mug and a soft smile grew on his face, "and then there is that."

They both looked at the coffee mug, suddenly solemn and monumental, as if it had somehow walked in on them and forced them to face what had been building for weeks, turning their world upside down into the unknown waters of a shifting relationship.

"What time is it?"

"Half-past two."

Light held on to the other chair's armrest and pulled the rolling chair towards him so that they were next to each other, and once the chairs were practically interlocked, Light started brushing his hair the same way he had nights before. Ryuzaki melted against his hand to the point where his head was resting on Light's shoulder.

"Maybe yours is physical affection."

Light felt Ryuzaki's cold nose against his neck, as he took a deep breath of him and he made himself comfortable in Light's skin.

"Your mother is like you."

"Mhm," he agreed softly.

"Your sister seems to rely on words of affirmation."

"She has always been quite vocal."

"What about your father?"

The silence was condemning, Light lost for words, and L probably thinking of the door he had opened.

"He does not seem like-"

"He doesn't know what love is."

"Do you?"

Back then he had thought of the happiness he felt when his mother said that she was proud, or when her sister announced that he was the best older brother in the whole wide world. Now, he thought of the squeezing sensation that burrowed in his chest when he thought of L and the possibility of a life beyond the walls of the tower.

"I do."

The water on him was crystallizing, his clothes becoming stiff along with his hair, and he started noticing his fingers were turning purple and he couldn't quite feel his toes.

When they looked away from their world into any possible topic in the realm of discussion, when the stars and peaking sunlight were their only companions, they had never thought of speaking of Misa. Back when he didn't have his memories, he guessed he had loved her at some point the same way their parents must have, and therefore he never questioned her presence.

"We have to go out on a date!"

She could be obnoxious, but he tried to understand her and reason that she only wanted normality between them, as hard as it was in their current situation.

"When I'm not chained anymore."

The meter and a half of chains turned thick and heavy, dragging him down in a way he never had felt before. He looked at L and he looked back, and it was the first time he acknowledged that maybe instincts were not the only thing that had pushed them towards each other. Instinct would have made them take care of each other's necessities in the fastest and most effective fashion, instincts did not push you to stay awake with one another until the other could put their thoughts to rest.

"And when is that going to be?"

Instincts were not about tiptoeing around each other, waiting to see who would be the first one to jump into what they had made, like animals in the zoo put there for entertainment. Misa didn't stir anything in him, not instincts and not caution, but L was too much.

"Soon."

He was glad she truly adored him for whatever reason since it took a lot less effort for him to keep her happy, but he also wished she could simply walk away and take with her one more problem in his current dilemma. She left later that night along with the rest of the task force, and once the door was closed they were both ready to pounce.

"I was under the impression that you didn't like Misa." "I don't."

"Then why lead her on?"

"I don't know."

"There's a lot of things you don't know as of recently, Light-kun."

He didn't know what was wrong with him, or why he was feeling a certain way about anything, and why there were so many blank spaces in his memory, or what had landed him in his current position.

"I guess."

He walked towards L and just as he was about to pass by him, L pulled him by the chains towards him, making Light stumble and hold on to the detective as support, both of them separated by mere centimeters.

"Why did you do that?"

They seemed to be breathing the same air, borrowing it from one another in the deep-rooted name of survival, but he had never felt as close to death as in those three seconds that it took for him to get an answer.

"I don't know."

"Well," he answered without missing a beat, "apparently there's a lot of things you don't know either."

It was enough to push them over the edge, to bring Light back to life, and to finally stop the tiptoeing around each other. L held on to his face and kissed him roughly as if he was angry about it, but Light still found it impossible to not reciprocate.

_‘If a man causes disfigurement of his neighbor, as he has done, so shall it be done to him—fracture for fracture, eye for eye, tooth for tooth; as he has caused disfigurement of a man, so shall it be done to him. And whoever kills an animal shall restore it; but whoever kills a man shall be put to death..."_

When the next load of water hit his skin, he let a loud curse resonate within the small space to let the anger warm him up for a couple of seconds before he succumbed back to the cold.

While that had been their first time, it hadn't been the last. Many things had driven them to the moment, from the coffee cups to the nightmares, but the first time he noticed something was being set in motion it had been too tentative and questionable to put a name on it.

Watari always brought Ryuzaki a slice of strawberry shortcake in the late hours of the night, and while Light wasn't thoroughly invested into sweets, he had to admire Watari's attention to detail as every slice looked the same as the day before. A layer of biscuit was followed by whipped cream and sliced strawberries and more whipped cream and another biscuit, to be topped off with a dollop of cream and a whole strawberry. Ryuzaki was quite methodical in everything he did, and the consumption of sweets was not the exception of the rule, as every time the last thing to be eaten in the cake was the garnish on top. Multiple times had he been caught staring, and one night before the cake was terminated, Ryuzaki pinched the strawberry and covered it in cream, to then offer it to Light.

He remembers staring at Ryuzaki as he looked at the computer screen as if it wasn't truly him the one making the offering, and before he could think anything else of it he ate the treat and gave the fork back. Ryuzaki kept eating the cake, and no other interactions occurred between them until the following day when the rest of the task force had arrived. From that day on, every time the last member of the force had gone home, a plate of strawberry shortcake was followed by a small bowl of strawberries with meager amounts of cream.

"Since you lack a sweet tooth," he replied as he had practically read Light's mind, and continued to do so in the upcoming weeks.

It had felt oddly affectionate, especially after being so far apart from someone that didn't feel like showing care was considered a weakness, and he clung to the strawberries like a drowning man into a lifejacket. Even when he had been tucked away in isolation, the bowl of sweet fruit had found the way to him, and Light had never felt more cared for.

Useless to say that no strawberries had found their way into Light's cell.

He hid his face from any prying cameras, and he allowed himself to cry for the first time since he had been imprisoned. He started at his hands with his blurring vision, the skin underneath his nails turning an odd purple, and he let the tears fall softly as he was afraid of them pooling and drowning him. He would never see his mother again, would never taste her food when he was feeling particularly miserable, and she would never tell him how much she loved him. Sayu would forget about his existence, maybe get a tutor for math or start getting better at it, and she would get married one day and there would be no one to threaten the man who believed himself to be good enough for Light's most precious treasure. He would never hear his father say he was proud of him, would never graduate from college, and would never start to live on his own. He would never eat strawberries with cream again, give apples to meddling Shinigamis, and he would stand by L's side to face whatever came their way.

The pain in his chest started to subside, along with his ability to breathe normally. He felt the signs of his body shutting down, and he didn't dare to fight it, a little eager to see what laid on the other side.

_"...You shall have the same law for the stranger and for one from your own country; for I am the Lord your God.’ Then Moses spoke to the children of Israel; and they took outside the camp him who had cursed, and stoned him with stones. So the children of Israel did as the Lord commanded Moses."_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I feel so sorry for poor Light (this one, of course), but things will get better for him later on :)
> 
> (Also while I know where the story is going, I don't think I'll be posting every day. I had these two parts written already but the rest will come soon.)


	3. Matthew

" _And when he had called unto him his twelve disciples, he gave them power against unclean spirits, to cast them out, and to heal all manner of sickness and all manner of disease. Now the names of the twelve apostles are these; The first, Simon, who is called Peter, and Andrew his brother; James the son of Zebedee, and John his brother; Philip, and Bartholomew; Thomas, and Matthew the publican; James the son of Alphaeus, and Lebbaeus, whose surname was Thaddaeus; Simon the Canaanite, and Judas Iscariot, who also betrayed him."_

The smell of the sea was something quite unmatchable. The hair was filled with salt and the smell of sunscreen, heat always present even on cold days. He had never gone to the beach, but if he had he'd reckoned it would smell something like it. He felt wise beyond his years, his body catching in the wind, and feeling himself fly. The sand clung to him everywhere it could, and he wrapped his arms around himself as he embraced the boiling blood within each vein. He blinked and found himself staring into an endless sea of purple, the water replaced by fields upon fields of blooming lavender that tickled his calves.

"It smells like soap."

L stood right behind him, his back against Light's own, and his muscles relaxed. The sun burnt just as bright as it had by the sea, but it seemed less scorching.

"I like it."

"I grew up here."

He tried looking for an end of the lilac herbs, for where the world ends and one may slip away, but he found himself unable to do so.

"Here?"

"Surprised?"

"Doesn't fit you much."

"What fits me?"

Light thought of a dark hole in the earth, where the only flowers that bloomed were poisonous yet beautiful. He saw the leaves come together and spit out a child who still had insomnia.

"I don't know."

The wind blew and played with them, breezing its hands through the fields and the flowers moved along like waves in the sea.

"I can't forgive you."

The bright flowers suddenly dried up, the smell of soap burning in his nose, and the fields of lilac turned dark and merciless.

"I know."

"You still want me to."

"Of course."

The fields caught fire on the sparks of tension, and he found himself burning along with them while L stood unmoved as a statue. He blinked again and found himself sitting on a cold marble counter, the light gone but the burning still lingering in his skin. His shirt was gone but L still held on to his back as if it still was on, his nails raking the skin right below his shoulder blades. He held on to the older man's face, a broken look only illuminated by the moonlight, and he found himself giving him everything he had: the broken, the dirty, the forgotten, only to see what he would make of it.

_"These twelve Jesus sent forth, and commanded them, saying, Go not into the way of the Gentiles, and into any city of the Samaritans enter ye not: But go rather to the lost sheep of the house of Israel. And as ye go, preach, saying, The kingdom of heaven is at hand. Heal the sick, cleanse the lepers, raise the dead, cast out devils: freely ye have received, freely give.Provide neither gold, nor silver, nor brass in your purses, Nor scrip for your journey, neither two coats, neither shoes, nor yet staves: for the workman is worthy of his meat. And into whatsoever city or town ye shall enter, enquire who in it is worthy; and there abide till ye go thence. And when ye come into an house, salute it. And if the house be worthy, let your peace come upon it: but if it be not worthy, let your peace return to you. And whosoever shall not receive you, nor hear your words, when ye depart out of that house or city, shake off the dust of your feet. Verily I say unto you, It shall be more tolerable for the land of Sodom and Gomorrha in the day of judgment, than for that city."_

He woke up to the pale walls of his cell, the cold returning to his bones, and he unconsciously dug his nails down his thighs trying to bring back the memories. He had never seen the sea or seen such fields of lavender, but he had sat on the bathroom's perennially-cold counter. He pushed his hair back, tugging it a bit, and he tried to ground himself the fastest way possible.

The door of his cell slowly opened, an old man dressed in black from head to toe coming through, and an unexpected and undesired wave of relief passed through him.

"I am glad to see that you have finally woken up, Light."

He seemed to sleep more recently, not like anything could be a judge of time on the cell, but it had certainly felt like such. The pain in his ribs had also seemed to become a new constant in his life, along with the occasional coughing, but he wasn't about to let his mind wander off.

"How long have I been out?"

The last thing he could remember well was the freezing room, but he knew that a while had passed as he could remember extremely brief episodes of consciousness.

"Long enough, but you have to understand that this unnecessary fight from you is simply useless. We have the upper hand in this situ-"

"Unnecessary?!"

"And none of your nonsense will last on a place like this."

"I have been-"

"Given many opportunities to atone for your crimes and sins, but there is no remorse or regret in you. I told him you wouldn't take such instances-"

"I am not going to give up simply because you want to end this."

"To redeem yourself, but he seems to have this blind fate in you."

He tried thinking of the Watari that would always bring him the strawberries and cream, the one that had somehow and quietly accepted him more than his own father had, and his chest tightened.

"He knows I'm here?"

"You have hurt someone very dear to me, put their judgment, reputation, and feelings into jeopardy because you felt entitled to play God. He might be able to separate Light Yagami from Kira, but I know that you are one and the same, and the both of you amount to nothing but scum."

"I care about him too."

He was not going to have that conversation with him on a dark cell, profess his feelings for a man to his father to then ask his hand in marriage. The situation would never come to him, and therefore he should avoid the useless debate.

"We do have a taped confession," said Watari quickly coming to the same conclusion.

"Then why bother?"

"Because you know is not as simple."

He could feel the ghost of L's hands hold on to his face, dipping the long fingers into Light's caramel hair, a burst of soft adrenaline-fueled laughter he had never heard before echoing in the room.

**"We got him."**

"Your father would have to endure such humiliation, along with your mother and sister. To be harassed in public not only for being related to Kira but because their son resorted to selling his own body and dignity to protect his neck."

His mouth tasted like spoiled cream, and he tried to remember that the old man in front of him had been able to shoot a gun out of a man's hand at a ridiculous distance. He was cold, definitely calculating, and if he could do such things in the name of duty, he couldn't fathom what he could be capable of in the name of love.

"I didn't-"

"You are a great actor, a conman, and a murderer. You cannot convince me otherwise, or that you ever cared about L."

"I-"

"I suggest you simply confess and prepare to die, Light. The only thing between you and a tombstone is however long you decide to take: If a tribunal won't do it, then I can guarantee you I will."

"He knows I am here?"

"He asked us to get a confession from you any means necessary. You know he is capable of torture, why are you surprised?"

He found himself thinking again of sugar cubes lined up on the windowsill, and the soft look on L's face as he piled them up like nothing else mattered. He had found that same looked directed at him once or twice, and his eyes burned with the pain accumulated.

"You should consider yourself lucky, as you are still in the feeling and possession of all your extremities."

Behind Watari suddenly stood L, moonlight and darkness painting him over as stood in the hallway and stared straight into his soul.

"I can't forgive you"

His throat turned into a knot, and before he could let anything out, the man disappeared. Watari looked over his shoulder to see what Light was focusing on, but he was met with a blank wall, and Light saw something unmentionable pass by his face.

"He is not here."

"I know."

He hadn't meant to sound so vulnerable, so utterly broken, but he had barely processed his dream before he was being interrogated about a man that had planted his roots deep within him.

"The fastest you confess, the easier it would be to obtain forgiveness."

"I'm sorry," he said as darkness spread within him like the fire in the fields of lavender, "but unlike you, I can recognize a losing battle."

_"Behold, I send you forth as sheep in the midst of wolves: be ye therefore wise as serpents, and harmless as doves. But beware of men: for they will deliver you up to the councils, and they will scourge you in their synagogues; And ye shall be brought before governors and kings for my sake, for a testimony against them and the Gentiles. But when they deliver you up, take no thought how or what ye shall speak: for it shall be given you in that same hour what ye shall speak. For it is not ye that speak, but the Spirit of your Father which speaketh in you._

_And the brother shall deliver up the brother to death, and the father the child: and the children shall rise up against their parents, and cause them to be put to death. And ye shall be hated of all men for my name's sake: but he that endureth to the end shall be saved. But when they persecute you in this city, flee ye into another: for verily I say unto you, Ye shall not have gone over the cities of Israel, till the Son of man be come._

_The disciple is not above his master, nor the servant above his lord. It is enough for the disciple that he be as his master, and the servant as his lord. If they have called the master of the house Beelzebub, how much more shall they call them of his household? Fear them not therefore: for there is nothing covered, that shall not be revealed; and hid, that shall not be known."_

Once he realized there was no immediate way out of his current predicament, he started obsessing over every sound and every memory. Sixty seconds in every minute, the odd ones turned into eons and the even ones into milliseconds, and he found himself even more lost in time. He focused on neutral memories, like the sound of traffic or the smell of coffee, since any others made his breathing erratic and his chest ache. His books were taken away, so he dedicated himself to keep track of how many times he had woken up, and how many times he had said "I love you" and meant it.

He said it to Misa once, when she wouldn't stop pestering him about something that currently escaped his mind. The coffee shop was quiet and cozy, completely different from both him and his then-girlfriend, and he found it utterly fascinating. They had jars of beans and leaves from every corner of every country, and he had found himself wanting to run a coffee shop and a bookshop, where people could drink from anywhere and read away into everywhere.

"Are you listening to me?"

"I am."

"But you've been staring into the walls."

"I love you."

He was colder, and it rolled off his tongue like skaters on the ice, but she had been just as happy as it had been any different. She squealed and went off a tangent of how her wedding dress would look like, while he kept staring at the walls. In retrospect, it was the most godawful place to tell someone you loved them. It was homey like it asked you to bear yourself to it and force it out of you.

Guard zero-three-five, one of the ones that had almost drowned him in the shower, was the eldest of four. His father had been neglectful and his mother was mostly absent as she had been a flight attendant in her youthful years. He had learned hard discipline from his father and made sure to pass it down to his younger siblings, never missing an opportunity to showcase the strength of a hard hand. Behind him were his twin sisters, and following them was another boy. The oldest twin had run away from home when she had been only twelve, the youngest staying to pick up the slack as the guard firmly upheld his beliefs of what women should do in a household, and his youngest brother had committed suicide before she had graduated middle school. Light leaned that to be considered worse than scum, you do not necessarily need to have seen the insides of a prison cell. He thought of himself treating Sayu in such way, and a wave of nausea settled in him.

He had said it to his father too many times. When he had been almost young enough to forget and his father still had a son worth praising, Soichiro would tell Light the sort of stories that made him wonder the next day. Every night, he would cut his story short as Light tethered between sleep and consciousness, and before he reached the door he would softly say it.

"I love you."

"I love you too."

It felt like a duty. Back then he had been naive and clueless, as a child should, but as he grew older he realized that his father's affections came as easily as it had come for him to lie to Misa. He wondered if his father had meant it back then, or if it had sounded as he would remember it due to current experience. As he grew up, it became harder for him to let his father know he still loved him. He tried showing it, making him proud of having a child like him, but it somehow always came short. The sadness also grew harder on him, more resistant.

Guard four-nine-eight was different. He was the one that pulled the words out of zero- three-five, and by the tone of his voice, he was the one that secretly sympathized with the youngest sisters. His mother and father were both very hard-working people, making sure their sons had everything he could possibly need when they were killed by a drunken driver. They had been just teenagers when it happened, but both boys decided to join the force: the oldest becoming a cop, and the youngest a prison guard. Light respected him, as much as the man didn't respect him, because he had a noble cause on his shoulders.

His mother and Sayu were completely different, of course. His mother always reminded him that she loved him, and always made sure he felt it with the same fervor she felt it. When Light would scuff his knees, or when he hadn't necessarily gotten the highest mark in a class, she would bend down to his level and pull the hair away from his face.

"Remember I love you, alright?"

"Alright."

He had grown up, his classmates became disgusted with their parents and any sort of affection, and while his mother assumed that he would feel the same, he was always excited and deeply touched when his mother would simply look at him and smile.

"You know I love you, right?"

"I love you too."

He had meant it every time.

Sayu had been the one to teach him that the fire brewing in one's belly along with the burning in the chest and the sudden protectiveness was love. She had been a tiny baby yet quite curious, her eyes always bright and searching, and Light always made sure to be there when she came looking.

"Can you help me out with my homework?"

"Later, when I am done studying."

"When is that going to be?"

"Five minutes."

"I love you!"

"Love you too."

He had been sarcastic more often than not, but his sister had been the light of his life.

Guard six-five-one was also quite normal. He was an ordinary man who worked hard to provide for his daughter, whom he was raising alone. According to the tales of the other guards, he was the one that was "softer" or more compassionate for the other inmates, Light included, and he wondered if it had something to do with his daughter. Her name was Ichika, and Light imagined her sometimes, talking to him and keeping him company when the guards decided to give each other the silent treatment. She was rather sweet, with honey-colored hair, and Light always told her the tales of his childhood.

He said it to L once.

"We'll have to interrogate him tomorrow, but we got him."

The detective was laughing in the most awkward way possible, almost giggling into Light's neck, and he was overcome with the fiery sensation in his chest that grew up with the same pace as guilt.

"I'm so glad, Light-kun, I am so glad."

The stoic man was gone, a man crumbling in front of him and he was trying to catch the pieces in the best way possible while also trying to keep himself afloat, quickly failing to do so.

"I'm sorry."

"What for?"

He couldn't do it anymore. He had placed a bet on his endurance and character, but he ended up being more human than first expected.

"I love you, but I am so sorry."

"Light-"

"I'm Kira."

Useless to say, it hadn't ended well. He wondered if L believed he had been trying to buy him with cheap words of affection, but he had felt it like never before. Light felt tears burn in his eyes, and all he wanted was to have the detective in front of him to confess one more time, once the execution was signed and underway, when nothing could save him just to show him that he wasn't hiding.

He thought of the coffee shop, and how he would have never said such a thing to L in such place. It had been the wrong people, but if they had simply solved another case and L would have still laughed into his skin, he would've uttered it just the same. He scratched off the marks off his wall and decided to start a new count with two marks.

Guard zero-zero-two was the worst one of the bunch. Light's hairs on the back of his neck rose just by hearing his boots resonate in the halls, unable to remove his voice from his mind like the stains of blood on the walls. He was a father of a boy, whom the guard considered to be the worst scum of the earth, and a girl, who seemed to be the only purpose of his existence. His wife had died during childbirth, and so he made it his life's mission to care for his daughter like his wife once had. The man painted his son as an idiot, unable to concentrate in class or even look at him when he talked. He had implemented rearing techniques from zero-three-five and tried beating the undesirability out of the kid.

"Can you believe it?" He asked once to six-five-one, "the kid is looking past me when I talk to him if he even looks up at all, so I taught him a lesson. Do you know what he did the next day? The same thing!"

"Maybe he needs more time to adjust?"

"Not after the disciplinary session we had."

"Maybe he's afraid of looking at you, or maybe he has trouble with looking at people in the eyes. You should check it out with his teachers or-"

"You are too much of a wuss."

One night, before Sayu was born, his father came home and did not utter a word. Light had been naive and still climbed on his lap to demand his daily-yet-meager routine of affection when his father had snapped. Soichiro hadn't dared to raise a hand at Light, but he never sat on his father's lap ever again, and it took him a while to even approach the man again. He felt his chest constrict and goosebumps trail across his skin when he thought of zero-zero-two's son, and he wished he could tell him that he hadn't done anything wrong.

**"Light, you have to understand. Sometimes your father is not in a mood for such things."**

It somehow became his fault too.

One night he found himself tracing the protruding vertebrae in L's back when the detective simply shifted away. He was awake, Light could tell as he plunged into a deep state of hurt. Light turned around and faced the other wall trying to remind himself that it was something probably unconscious, definitely stupid and that it wasn't L's fault that he had more than one unresolved issue.

**"You are too grown for this! Every night, as if I don't want to do anything else but indulge your ridiculousness. Go play with your toys or go bother your mother."**

He felt four and ridiculous, stunned and scared as he retreated into his room in fear to go to his mother and become a bother to the only one that still cared about him. He dug his nails on his biceps and breathed softly as if he had also turned away and fallen asleep and was nowhere near losing his mind. He hated himself for being incapable of taking any sort of rejection, but he also hated his father for instilling in him that it was the norm.

His breath hiccuped, and the detective turned his way before he could act like nothing had been going on. He hadn't questioned anything, just stared holes into Light's back and quickly stuck to it, his arms wrapping around Light's middle.

"If you would have kept going," he said softly, "we wouldn't have slept."

That had been back in a spacious room with tall windows and no splatters on the walls. Everything became harder in such tight quarters.

"I love you."

He had been sleeping, the only light source coming from the small space underneath the door, when a soft ghostly hand laid on his shoulder. He tried to hold still and quiet, but he felt a warm breath behind his ear that gave him goosebumps.

"I wished you would have kept quiet."

"I wouldn't have made it very far."

"You had made it quite far."

"Not while remembering."

"I love you, but I can't forgive you."

His hand practically swatted the small space behind him, and he found himself heartbroken when his hand only met his mattress.

_"What I tell you in darkness, that speak ye in light: and what ye hear in the ear, that preach ye upon the housetops. And fear not them which kill the body, but are not able to kill the soul: but rather fear him which is able to destroy both soul and body in hell. Are not two sparrows sold for a farthing? and one of them shall not fall on the ground without your Father._

_But the very hairs of your head are all numbered. Fear ye not therefore, ye are of more value than many sparrows. Whosoever therefore shall confess me before men, him will I confess also before my Father which is in heaven. But whosoever shall deny me before men, him will I also deny before my Father which is in heaven._

He saw L four more times before someone else came knocking into his cell. Zero-zero- two and zero-three-five walked in his cell and took him through a different set of hallways as last time, and Light quickly found himself in a white room. No windows, no mirrors, only a white camera in a corner, some while chains hanging off the ceiling, and two white chairs."

"Apparently," said Mello before walking in and closing the also-white door behind him, "some people do better in familiar environments."

"Do better?"

"Interrogation wise," he replied coming into Light's panoramic view. The teen wore black leather pants and tank top, dark combat boots, and fingerless gloves along with dangling silver bracelets and a thin and delicate rosary close to his neck. Light thought that it was tight enough so every morning Mello had to wake up and put it on, and he wondered if he was a believer of a twisted and sick form of absolute justice.

"Interrogation wise."

From his left hand spun a white baseball bat, and Mello seemed to be paying more attention to it than to Light.

"Do you feel like playing a game, Kira-kun?"

Mello looked like the twisted park of him, thirsty for violence and demanding to wreak havoc to simply sit back and watch.

"Depends."

"Nothing too complicated. I ask a question, and if you answer you get to ask one back."

He liked playing with fire, being everything but a saint, and Light found himself drawn into a game he had quite missed.

"Are you Kira?"

"Yes."

He could see them both, pulling fire from a pit and playing with it before passing it along to Light. They were both testing how much they could do without burning themselves, but Light had already been burnt before.

"How long have I been locked away?"

"Almost four months. What do you use to kill?"

"A Death Note."

"How does it work?"

"They didn't give you much background information."

"I am supposed to enlighten a tribunal that has no idea of how you operate."

"Who are you to L?"

"His successor."

The answer ripped a laugh out of Light, his chest burning with the exertion, but he hadn't laughed in so long he was willing to sacrifice the pain. The bat came swinging down before he saw it, and the sharp pain on his ribs cut short any thoughts of laughing or even breathing. A quick whistle and the two guards came back to tie him up to the chains that hung from the ceiling, and they were tightened so he had to stand on his toes to avoid hanging from his arms.

"Quite a comedian, aren't you?"

"Definitely."

"How does it work?"

"You write someone's name," he said while still trying to catch his breath, "and they die."

"Before you think of lying again, I remind you that I do not only have a bat but a videotaped-"

"If you don't believe me, ask your mentor. What do you mean by his successor?"

"L isn't simply a freak. He is the most respected detective in the world, and once he retires or passes away, someone is going to have to step up to the task."

"And you're the only one?"

"What are the rules of the notebook?"

"Many for me to remember. You're not the only one fighting for the title, right?"

"Concerned?"

"For other people."

"I'm not the only one."

"It was established that you need a face and a name to kill, but the second Kira could do it with just the face. How?"

"That I won't tell."

"But you do know?"

"Of course."

The bat came swinging down again, and while this time he saw it, there wasn't much he could do about it.

"If I were you," said Mello as he pushed away his bangs from his eyes, "I would start redefining what you are willing to talk about. If not, you're going to find yourself dying for stupid things."

"Such as?"

"The preservation of others, love... things of that nature."

_"Think not that I am come to send peace on earth: I came not to send peace, but a sword. For I am come to set a man at variance against his father, and the daughter against her mother, and the daughter in law against her mother in law. And a man's foes shall be they of his own household. He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. And he that taketh not his cross, and followeth after me, is not worthy of me. He that findeth his life shall lose it: and he that loseth his life for my sake shall find it. He that receiveth you receiveth me, and he that receiveth me receiveth him that sent me._

_He that receiveth a prophet in the name of a prophet shall receive a prophet's reward; and he that receiveth a righteous man in the name of a righteous man shall receive a righteous man's reward. And whosoever shall give to drink unto one of these little ones a cup of cold water only in the name of a disciple, verily I say unto you, he shall in no wise lose his reward."_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry I took quite a bit! I rewrote it three times and still couldn't bring myself to finishing it :(


	4. Revelations

_"And I saw when the Lamb opened one of the seals, and I heard, as it were the noise of thunder, one of the four beasts saying, Come and see. And I saw, and behold a white horse: and he that sat on him had a bow; and a crown was given unto him: and he went forth conquering, and to conquer."_

He had to remind himself, more often than not, who he was and what he had done. He felt like a nostalgic old man, trying to remind himself of the great feats of his long–or short– life. It started one moment when he woke up and was disoriented enough to not remember his name, and while it could have been the effects of a recent concussion, he felt afraid enough to make a conscious effort to look back. 

**My name is Light Yagami. I was born on February twenty-eight of the year nineteen eighty-six, and I believe to be eighteen years old still. I am being held prisoner under charges relating to the murders of thousands of inmates. I am guilty.**

He believed that to be enough when he first started, but he quickly realized that he had forgotten to even describe the past eighteen years. 

**My name is Light Yagami. I was born on February twenty-eight of the year nineteen eighty-six, and I believe to be eighteen years old still. I had a tranquil life, but currently, I am being held prisoner under charges relating to the murders of thousands of inmates. I am guilty.**

It still wasn't enough. He felt as if he owed so much to so many people, and it was not fair to anyone that had made a conscious effort to better him as a person. His story left too many gaps to be filled by those who wrote history, and while he may never be able to tell his tale, the very least he could do is do justice to his mind. 

**My name is Light Yagami. I was born on February twenty-eight of the year nineteen eighty-six, and I believe to be eighteen years old still. My father was strict, my mother nurturing, and my sister affectionate. I was never trouble, although I wish I had been, and managed to excel in everything I did. I got a hold of a Death Note and I committed numerous murders in the last year with it, but thanks to it I-**

He could never bring himself to finish it simply because there was too much to be told for him to retell every time. As if he could ever forget that. When the story started to feel more like a eulogy, he realized that he was likely to die soon, and it was hard to come with one's mortality when every passing second is determined to take you closer to it. Light cried at first, screamed from the top of his lungs every time a new wound was inflicted on top of scabbing ones, every time his body shook with chills, and the ever-present pain in his chest. It got to a point where he couldn't bring himself to hurt anymore, to feel anything but the hollowness within him, so he just let himself go, pride be damned. 

When he didn't feel like Light Yagami anymore, he noticed that it was hardly possible for a room to be the same tone of white. Ceiling, walls, and floors had been painted in the exact same shade of titanium white with the exception that the floor and some walls had earned spots of color thanks to his blood and other bodily fluids. His uniform was always an almost glowing white, the chains that tied him up were white as well, and any sort of tool or instrument seemed to match all the previous ones in coloring. There was no noise besides his own, no flickering lights, and no shadows coming from anywhere. While he had thought that his cell was boring, he never envisioned there could be somewhere worse. 

"Did you know," asked L, staring in a corner of the room, "that most likely is the sensory deprivation that will end you?" 

He hadn't heard the man come in, and he felt his heart stop in his chest at the sight. The emptiness was replaced by relief and deep longing, and Light found it hard to hide a smile. 

"Really now." 

"You will start losing track of time, the grip of reality, and then move on to hallucinate. Maybe they will return you to your cell or maybe not but in the case they do and you are still having visions, the jury will execute you anyways." 

"Even if I am not mentally capable of standing for trial?"

"Who says you are getting a trial?"

He felt angry, defeated, and wounded.

"You are so incredibly selfish." 

He had said those same words in another place, a cuff still biting into his wrist, but with a different state of mind. The case had reached a halt, no other information pouring in, and the only thing they could do was wait for development or wait for a miracle. 

"People are dying out there, and you are depressed because it doesn't get your attention anymore," Light practically screamed while pacing back and forth in a single line, "It doesn't keep you busy and now it becomes irrelevant? Worthless? You are so ridiculo-" 

L had pulled from the chain of the handcuffs suddenly, making Light stumble towards the couch and fall on the spot on the floor right in front of him. L stood up and straddled Light, pinning his wrist to the floor as he simply stared. 

"Real people, that while they are despicable they also have families, are dying nonstop and-" 

"You have no idea." 

"What is that even supposed to mean?" He asked almost hysterically as he fought the grip on his hands. "How can you stand there and give up when the whole world is counting on you?" 

"I don't owe anything to anybody."

"What about the victims?"

"No." 

"The families?"

"Light-kun, you need to-"

"Me?"

L's head tilted, like a confused puppy would, and the thought that maybe they were all broken passed by Light's mind. 

"You?" 

"I trust you, believe in you. Doesn't it-" 

His hands came loose, but he found the other's hands next to each side of his head as well as a mouthful of detective. Light couldn't help his hands as he tangled them in the ink-like hair, and when he felt the teeth harshly nip his bottom lip, he used his hands to pull the detective away. 

"No," he replied as Light felt a metal taste in his mouth, "I don't owe the families or you anything. I never asked anyone to put their faith in me." 

"It isn't like that." 

It wasn't a conversation to be had on the floor, as it was going beyond their current case, but they never did do anything properly.

"I don't trust you because you asked me to, but because you are a smart and capable person-" 

"Only smart?" 

"I'm not here to feed your ego. People put faith in one another because they prove themselves to be worth it, and while I know you are not perfect or infallible I was under the impression that you were giving it your best." 

"I can't be discouraged?"

"You can be, but you shouldn't practically quit the case just because we have to wait." "I am not a good person."

It struck Light, grounded him even more than he already was.

"I don't do what I do out of being good, whatever that means. I have no personal motivations beyond being curious, so while I believe to be flattered by your ideas of me, I have to make it clear for you." 

Light stared at the detective, incapable of thinking of coming up with an answer when he felt L's thumb smoothing down the frown lines in his forehead. He circled his arms around the older man's torso and pulled him down with him back to the cold floor. 

"You just don't know how great you are."

"Subjective."

"Probably."

They had stayed like that for a while, embracing each other in the most uncomfortable of places, but it felt as time had frozen and they didn't have an impending crisis to fix. "If you are not going to do it for me-"

"Light-" 

"Then do it for yourself. You don't need another reason to stay up at night." 

Although they spent most of the night in the same position, although not on the floor, they didn't say much of the topic until later next morning when L asked everyone to review old information and evidence while waiting for a new lead, hoping to find something they had missed. It kept everyone busy, unable to think much beyond their tasks, and Light found it hard to not be proud. 

"Here," L handed him some files and sat back in his seat, and when Light opened the first folder, he was greeted with a long list of dead criminals partially covered with a note written in almost-perfect cursive. 

**"I'm sorry. Thank you."**

He had never imagined what his father would say if he found out he had some sort of "arrangement" with the detective. If he had known when he was arrested, he would have killed Light on the spot just to make sure L wouldn't give him a free pass. If he had known before, when they still shared a room and a routine, he would have thoroughly disapproved. 

"Nothing wrong with them," he said once, looking at a couple in the supermarket, "but I wouldn't want anything to do with them." 

He would have been disowned. He realized that even if he were to miraculously be absolved of every crime and was allowed to join back society, he didn't want to see Soichiro ever again. He wanted the man who looked at him back when he was a child, who wasn't constantly waiting for his son to do something that would validate caring for him, as if he was some sort of burden or investment. 

"You are so incredibly selfish. I am dying here, and all you can say is that I won't even get a chance to say anything for myself. If you came here just to say that then you should have just me die in peace." 

"I'm here, am I not?" 

It gave him everything but peace to see the detective stand there as if it was beyond him, so infinitely away from Light. He felt disgusting in his skin, years of crafting good looks and perfection to be ruined by the stain of his mind. He caught himself a breath away from asking L to kiss him one last time. 

_"And when he had opened the second seal, I heard the second beast say, Come and see. And there went out another horse that was red: and power was given to him that sat thereon to take peace from the earth, and that they should kill one another: and there was given unto him a great sword."_

There were no barriers between memories and the present, the whiteness getting to his mind, and he spent most of the time trying to decipher whether he had lived it or he was imagining it. 

"It's all part of the sensory deprivation." 

"I'm sorry?" 

"And the trauma, of course."

"I know."

"Then why are you so lost?"

"There is quite a large gap between knowing the psychological effects of everything that a body goes through in stressful situations, and experimenting said effects." 

"You thought you were a god."

"I never thought I would end like this."

"All of this is meant to break even the strongest of individuals." 

"What a compliment."

"Maybe you should confess."

"What for?"

"You are going to die anyway. Whether it's hanging, lethal injection, or a beating, you are not seeing the sun ever again."

"I'm not going to confess to some blond punk that thinks that he is greater than life." 

"He is quite like you."

"I don't torture people for fun."

"No, you kill them."

_"And when he had opened the third seal, I heard the third beast say, Come and see. And I beheld, and lo a black horse; and he that sat on him had a pair of balances in his hand. And I heard a voice in the midst of the four beasts say, A measure of wheat for a penny, and three measures of barley for a penny; and see thou hurt not the oil and the wine."_

More white, fragments of splitting lights that barely let him sleep, and only bruises coloring the place. He wished he could take pictures of himself and hang them on the walls, hematomas adding splashes of color to the bleak waiting for his own limits to surface through the horizon. 

"It would definitely add something to the place."

"Along with some cushions."

"The same purple of the bruises?"

"Or the same red as that one dried up speck of blood." 

"Speck forty-nine or thirty-two?" 

"Twenty-three, on the floor."

"It would contrast quite well."

"If we were normal people," he asked once deep in agony, "would you love me?" 

"Maybe."

"We could have lived together."

"Somewhere warm."

"Not hot."

"Maybe in the tropics." 

"Maybe by the sea?"

"Why?"

"I don't know. I think it's majestic, isn't it?"

"You have never seen it."

"I know."

Mello's determination seemed to be withering away with Light's patience, and there were days where he would simply walk in and stare at Light as if he was waiting for his final breaths. 

"You are going to make me kill you." 

Light didn't bother with replying to Mello, knowing it would just get him into more trouble than it was worth, and so he had decided to simply stare into the one soft like that divided the walls from the ceiling. 

"That wasn't the plan. I thought I would enjoy this more than I am, and I would be grateful if you could just end this for the both of us." 

_"And when he had opened the fourth seal, I heard the voice of the fourth beast say, Come and see. And I looked, and behold a pale horse: and his name that sat on him was Death, and Hell followed with him. And power was given unto them over the fourth part of the earth, to kill with sword, and with hunger, and with death, and with the beasts of the earth."_

They touched him. 

When he passed out, some people cared for him. He had marks in the veins in his arms, his bottoms always clean when he woke up, and he never smelled enough for him to notice the fact that he couldn't remember when was the last time he showered. He felt his skin crawl, his eyes well up once again, and he swallowed it down trying to forget he was a human being. 

He didn't like being touched. His mother hugged him or caressed his face when they were already tears on his eyes, and he had wished multiple times that he had it within him to simply walk up to her and bury his face in her neck, or that his mother was extraordinary enough to somehow read his mind. Sayu liked touching him if it made him uncomfortable, like when he was trying to memorize a particularly complicated formula, and she simply stuck to him to take his mind away from the books and back into real life. She hadn't been malicious, but Light always wanted to push her away. His father only ruffled his hair or placed his heavy hand on his shoulder when he had done something terribly magnificent and marvelously taxing. In other words, he had been raised to avoid being touched until L had shown up and had taken any and all situations to touch Light. 

One night, he was tired after barely sleeping for a couple of days and decided to finally drag L to their bed. 

"But I'm not tired." 

"That's too bad." 

Light laid down under the covers, his feet warming up under the blankets and his mind adrift when he felt a hand brush the hair off his forehead. He softly opened one eye to see the detective, a file open on his lap, and his back against the headboard as he sat cross-legged. 

"I thought I said I was tired."

"You did say that."

"Then may I sleep?"

L pushed the file off of him and pulled him onto his lap, Light's head resting on the crook of his neck, and then placed a kiss on the tip of Light's nose. By the time he had made sure his face and chest were not going to burst, L had the file back onto themselves and was examining it profusely. 

"Ryuzaki-"

"Can you sleep here?"

He knew his back would kill him the next day, maybe even his neck, and that he needed the full night of rest to catch up on Kira. He also knew that L was warm and that an arm behind him promised to hold him for the rest of the night. 

"If you insist." 

The smell and warmth of the man's skin made Light fall asleep faster than he would've imagined, and when he woke up he was being practically cradled. He felt utterly loved, and he had to admit to himself that it could become an addiction stronger than most drugs. 

_"And when he had opened the fifth seal, I saw under the altar the souls of them that were slain for the word of God, and for the testimony which they held..."_

"Oh my god."

"No such thing."

He wanted desperately to open his eyes and see who was the owner of the second voice, but his body wasn't responding to him beyond the occasional spasm. 

"Why?" 

"Watari said L couldn't do the interrogation, something about being compromised, and asked me to get a confession through any means." 

"You shouldn't have."

"Someone else would've done it anyway."

"You are going to tell L, right?"

"What for?"

He was fighting hard to stay conscious but he could hold on for much longer, his mind muddling up.

"Because you'll be lucky to stay alive if L finds out, much less become the successor." 

_"...And they cried with a loud voice, saying, How long, O Lord, holy and true, dost thou not judge and avenge our blood on them that dwell on the earth?"_

"Would we have gotten married?" 

Light uttered that sentence with that felt like his dying breath. Mello stopped pacing and L–who had never visited Light in Mello's presence–showed up and stood in the same corner he always did. 

"Of course, although I don't believe in marriage."

"Oh?"

"Not that you can't spend your life with someone, but involving the government?" 

"Did you think about the house?"

"We said tropics, right?"

"Kira?"

Mello came around from behind him, an expression of worry painted on his face. 

"Yes. The Caribbean?"

"Most likely."

"Who are you talking to?"

"A European island, either English or French. Somewhere isolated, but not uninhabited either." 

"Light?" 

Mello had never called him by his first name and it popped a bubble. Once he looked at Mello, the blonde seemed to relax and take a deep breath. 

"Who are you talking to?"

Light looked at the corner where L still stood and back at Mello.

"Don't you see him?"

Mello looked at L and back at Light, the same expression still present. The boy stopped, practically stumbled back, and walked out of the room. 

_"And white robes were given unto every one of them; and it was said unto them, that they should rest yet for a little season, until their fellow servants also and their brethren, that should be killed as they were, should be fulfilled."_

"You are a fool."

"I didn't bring you here for this."

"No, you didn't. You brought me here so I would be the one to pass the message to L, as if we have any way of doing so, and so you can stay in Watari's and Roger's good graces." 

"I can't waste time looking on how to contact L-"

"What about Matt?"

"He tried, but couldn't."

"What makes you think I can?" 

"Perspective?"

_"And I beheld when he had opened the sixth seal, and, lo, there was a great earthquake; and the sun became black s sackcloth of hair, and the moon became as blood."_

"Mello thinks you've lost your mind." 

"Have I?"

"Probably."

"So you-" 

"I've never really been here." 

"How embarrassing."

"Truly."

"How can I know you're not lying?" 

"I love you." 

It froze his blood, his already-shallow breaths into his body, and he started crying before he realized what was going on. 

"The real L wouldn't say such a thing, would he?" 

_"And the stars of heaven fell unto the earth, even as a fig tree casteth her untimely figs, when she is shaken of a mighty wind. And the heaven departed as a scroll when it is rolled together; and every mountain and island were moved out of their places._

_And the kings of the earth, and the great men, and the rich men, and the chief captains, and the mighty men, and every bondman, and every free man, hid themselves in the dens and in the rocks of the mountains; and said to the mountains and rocks, Fall on us, and hide us from the face of him that sitteth on the throne, and from the wrath of the Lamb._

_For the great day of his wrath is come; and who shall be able to stand?"_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Today (02/28) is Light’s birthday, and I actually found out when I was about to post the chapter, so it’s a nice coincidence... or is it? ;)


End file.
